Category: Esports

Attitude is by far the most important asset you have, more important than skill, more important than your network, more important than everything. Your attitude will determine how far you make it in life. This is one man’s opinion and from what I have experienced thus far in my life, attitude is a really big deal.

I remember in my younger years my parents used to reiterate to me attitude is important and being polite and showing respect for other human beings is important. I think that can all be categorized under attitude. It comes down to your personality as a whole. I’m not really sure how you develop or are taught good attitude. Obviously a lot of it comes from the way you’re parented and the circumstances of your upbringing and the people and things you associate with both growing up and day-to-day today. I just know that having the rind mindset about life is so vitally important to your success in the things you want to do in life.

Think about it. You can be the most amazing soccer player in the world, but if you’re a terrible human being no one is going to like you. No one is going to want to associate with you or put you on a team. If you’re rotten people are going to naturally gravitate away from you. We naturally want positivity and happiness in our lives, it’s how we are wired.

How you conduct yourself, the way you put yourself out to the world, the way you interact with other people, are you thinking about your attitude? When something goes wrong do you immediately blame someone else? When someone you rely on makes a mistake are you immediately jumping to conclusions without getting some facts first? When someone cuts you off on the highway, how do you react? These are just some questions you can ask.

I’m not saying it’s not ok to get frustrated or angry, but I am saying that maybe jumping down someone’s throat immediately or flaming someone on the internet for one comment, maybe that’s a harsh reaction that’s reflective on your attitude.

But that’s not all right. I think about work ethic or when someone asks for a favor or when you lose a game. How do you handle adversity.

Answering these questions and really thinking about them, I think, will really help you figure out how your attitude currently is. Take some stock of what that looks and feels like for you and ask yourself, is this the right way to handle this situation? Could I do more? What would happen if I went the extra mile? What would happen if I reacted with positivity when someone messes up rather than getting angry. How about, what would happen instead of being mad and salty and trolling someone when I lose a game, how would it feel to congratulate my opponent and be happy for them, realizing that you learn more when you lose, when you fail.

The most amazing part about all of this to me, is that you are fully in control of your attitude. You decide how you react and how you behave and interact. You can choose to have a good attitude by focusing on the positive, by uplifting other people, by going the extra mile and doing the right thing. You can decide to have a good attitude and you can decide to continue to develop your attitude.

This is just some of my random thoughts on attitude and how it plays out in life. I know for a fact, 1 trillion percent, the reason I have been successful in my career and in life and the reason I will continue to be successful and happy is because I know that a good attitude and mindset is the most important skill I have. It sets me apart from other people in their negativity and pessimistic viewpoints. It’s a differentiator for me. It’s something that we need to install more of in our peers and friends and family.

If you got some value from this post, please share this with someone who needs to hear it and leave me a comment letting me know what you thought!

As I’m reading through the show notes for my first 10 episodes of The Esports Narrative I am noticing some trends, some common themes, across all of my guests. In this article I am going to share those themes with you, those lessons learned. I hope that you find value in this and are able to pick up on some little nuance that I am trying to communicate and I help that it helps you in your life or your career.

Lesson #1: know yourself above all else

In a world where there is so much opportunity and there is so many distractions pulling at your from every angle, it’s so so so important that you know yourself. You have to know what your innate talents are. What are you really just naturally good at? What are you bad at? Do you suck at spelling or are you a spelling bee champion? Do you just naturally have amazing athleticism or maybe you can’t even hit a layup uncontested. You have to figure out what you are good at and what you suck at. Before doing anything else, just figure that out. Once you know those two things you can begin engineering your life around those talents, skills and abilities.

The second part to this is knowing your passion. What is it that you want to be doing every day all day? I encourage you to look deep within yourself and really try to determine what that is. If you’re not sure, then pick something you’re passionate about and try it for a month, 3 months, 6 months. If you love it you will know and if not you will know. The only way to know what you’re passionate about is to taste it. You can’t search on google and watch youtube videos or listen to the 3 step process for finding your passion. You just have to try and experience and taste and figure it out.

Lesson #2: learn how to communicate…effectively

The second lesson I have learned from all of my guests is that you MUST learn to communicate and communicate effectively. Everyone can communicate and relay their thoughts and opinions. The key is to be able to communicate in an effective way. What that means is that what you are saying to someone is having some kind of affect or its causing some sort of response from them in a desirable way. For example. Say you’re a coach of a counter-strike team and they just lost a match. You saw some really glaring issues that you think the team needs to work on. How you communicate these weaknesses to your team is vital to you sticking around for one and two providing the team with the information they need to improve. You have to find a way to communicate clearly, concisely and without condescension in this case. Being able to convey your point and drive some sort of result is very important and it’s a skill that’s important not only for esports, but for life. Without good communication you have nothing.

Lesson #3: get to know other people in your industry

The last lesson I learned from my first 10 guests on The Esports Narrative is that you have to devote time to getting to know people in your industry. The guests on my show have recommended a number of things to achieve this but the top recommendations are to a) use Twitter to interact with people you’re interested in and b) go to events. When you interact on twitter, try to create meaningful relationships. Try to be add value to the conversation. You can do this in a number of ways. You can educate, entertain or inform. Each situation is different so you just have to evaluate it on a case by case basis. I am always trying to engage with the community. Whether it’s commenting with a funny meme or add some sort of real opinion or perspective on a topic I am always trying to connect in a meaningful way. If I ever meet the people i’m interacting with online, in person, I want to be the same person. I don’t want to fake who I am on twitter only to be 180 degrees different in person. This is modern day networking. Before social media you had to leave your house and go to conferences and meetups and chamber of commerce meetings. While those are all very valuable things, you don’t have to rely solely on them to network anymore. So just remember, add value to your conversations. Focus on what the other person gets out of it and you will be able to create meaningful relationships and your networking will pay off.

Thank you for reading. I hope you got value from this. If you did get some tips from this I would really appreciate it and it would mean the world to me if you would tag 3,4,5,6 friends or share this post with them. It would mean so much to me that you share it. Thank you!

The internet has literally changed the world more than we’re able to comprehend because of the single fact that it’s still so young.

We’re living through one of the most interesting times of our lives where kids are watching more content on the internet than they are playing with legos. Kids are glued to their devices and their being fed content from just a few major platforms. You know the popular ones. Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube and there other other big players I’m leaving out but you get the point.

I want to focus on one specific platform I left out. Twitch. It’s Netflix + YouTube virality factor + twitter chat. It’s where every single young kid is going to watch content. Boys and girls. They are idealizing streamers and professional gamers. So much so that they want to be just like them. So there is a trend of every young kid wanting to be a YouTube star. And I think the next decade is going to be the age of every young kid wanting to be a pro gamer.

I think that is awesome. I think it’s great for the industry. Now it’s the adult time. If you’re leading an organization or a team or you are the platform developer ourself. You have THE responsibly to foster a community that is respectful and develop these young minds so that they are not only growing into great people and contributing to society but that they are also developing skills when they ultimately retire from pro gaming.

Yes I think we should be developing our youth for their ultimate retirement from pro gaming so they are prepared to make it after the fact.

I cannot wait until I’m in that position to do just that. I’m going to document the heck out of it and show the world what this pro gamer esports thing is REALLY all about.

Thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed this please give me some love, share this and let me know what you think in the comments.

I can’t wait to share with all of you this exciting project of mine. It’s always been a dream to do something in the esports space and now I finally have found something I can put my ambition, curiosity and skill into. More details will be revealed in the coming weeks as I get my website and infrastructure built up. Exciting times ahead, can’t wait! If you’re curious as to what this is all about and what to stay connected please give me a follow